Interesting Devblog: State of the Game

ProfDrDeath·Jan 18, 2017·8 votes·3,682 views

/dev: On State of the Game, January 2017 - Nexus - League of Legends

This is quite an interesting read on the current game state, as perceived by Riot.

It sheds a bit of light on why things like Vi, Hecarim and other junglers have not yet been nerfed. From the wording, I strongly suspect that 7.2 will have more jungle changes - meaning, Riot is trying to get a handle on general problem first before tackling individual champions.

Seems like a good approach to me, even though it makes PBE patches kinda boring (insert Fridge gif here).

19 Comments

RiotMeddlerJan 18, 201711 votes

Yep. We're trying to reduce cases of 'nerf the champion then nerf the other thing that was the real problem'. Not to say there won't be cases where a champion's too strong something they're taking advantage of is also too strong, but we're looking to hit items/jungle/masteries/other systems first where appropriate.

TheSingularityJan 18, 201715 votes

What's Riots stance on the current oppressiveness of damage across all classes? http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Tm3LWPlF-a-statement-to-riot-games? Sums it up pretty dam well as do many of the comments. One common opinion is that keystones and masteries in general add absurd amounts of damage with very little flexibility compared to the previous (no key-stone) mastery system. Keystones saw champs nerfed due to their mere existence and the "options" boil down to 2 at most, 1 in a majority of cases. There has and always will be an optimal cookie cutter build and there is no way around that.

VekknaJan 18, 20171 votes

Can you give an example of a champion who is struggling enough to justify a buff to lethality? As far as I can tell, only one arpen champ is significantly below 50% win rate, and that's Zed. How do you think that will affect the arpen champs that are currently between 49.5% and 54% win rates, which is literally all of them except Zed?

While you're here, can you give me some advice? I need to know what a mage's counterplay is to Nocturne and Rengar. Not sure how I should be spending the .8 seconds I have to react when I can't see them, cc them, or kill them in that amount of time. I look forward to your advice.

AcidTheWarlockJan 18, 20171 votes

Talon is pretty bad and he builds nothing but Lethality.

VekknaJan 19, 20171 votes

And he has a positive win rate in top lane. Is it possible for a large sample size to win a majority of games with a bad champ?

LankPantsJan 18, 20173 votes

If you plan to nerf CotC more and nerf jungle EXP further then what the fuck is your plan for jungle tanks? They're already under performing and these changes are huge net nerfs.

RiotMeddlerJan 19, 20173 votes

We've generally seen jungle tanks underperform, relative to other junglers, when the jungle itself is really strong. Champs best able to take advantage of plentiful jungle resources do best in that environment (Lee, Vi, Hecarim etc) at the expense of champs like tanks with less scaling and direct carry potential from personal damage.

LankPantsJan 19, 20175 votes

That doesn't change the fact that the class is currently very weak and every change you have made recently has been a huge nerf to them. You also say that you plan to nerf CotC and EXP again. CotC is an obvious nerf but so is EXP. Jungle tanks are level reliant, most aren't that gold reliant but they need levels to function. If If they're underleveled they end up being squishy and lacking core ranks in skills that they need to function. That's why most tank only gank opportunistically before level 6 and mostly hard farm there.

You also didn't answer my question at all, what are you going to do about how weak the class is currently? Could we expect to see anything like Cinderhulk buffs to help them out into the future?

Hyrum GraffJan 19, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Could we expect to see anything like Cinderhulk buffs to help them out into the future?

The problem is, by the time tanks get a cinderhulk, they no longer have issues. It's the early levels that're the problem, but it's hard to buff tanks and only tanks, there.

LankPantsJan 19, 20172 votes

The problem is, by the time tanks get a cinderhulk, they no longer have issues.

What world are you living in? When you get Cinderhulk on a tank you're still squishy as fuck unless you're Rammus. The item gives a block 450ish HP on completion but it really doesn't help you be tanky at that. You're still massively lacking in resists, you need 3 items to really be tanky as a tank in the jungle in most cases. Normally that's Cinder/Rands/SV.

It's the early levels that're the problem, but it's hard to buff tanks and only tanks, there.

So let them have a weakness and give them a strength in another area. If jungle tanks are weak early game they should scale up hard. Currently they don't. Someone like Lee starts stronger and keeps pace to around 3-4 items. Why would I play a tank when they take so long to scale and barely outscale anyway.

Cinderhulk is a good solution to this. It's a solution that only effects jungle tanks and doesn't help out lane tanks who aren't struggling in the same way. A simple buff like 15% increased HP>20% increased would mean an extra 100ish HP at 3 items, that's a very useful buff.

If I'm wrong and early game still winds up being a problem then my solution would be to tweak the Legendary Guardian mastery at T5 of the resolve tree to be something like 'take reduced damage from non-minion auto attacks and reflect an equal amount as magic damage'. Something like that would help tanks clear while being relatively exclusive to tanks, since it would require at least taking a resolve Keystone. With some tweaks to CotC to make it less attractive to bruisers cough %bonus HP cough you could expect most offensive junglers not to want to spec all the way down the resolve tree.

Hyrum GraffJan 19, 20171 votes

Sorry, I was unclear. I was referring specifically to tanks having difficulty clearing.

The Yetii RiderJan 19, 20171 votes

Meddler, I'm worried that if you continue to nerf Courage of the Colossus that it's going to end up feeling overall not worth using like Grasp of the Undying or Bond of Stone.

Visible power is good and using Courage of the Colossus feels good but if more health is just too much of a problem on divers and vanguards then...is there some other way we can have a genuine tank mastery that won't get abused and nerfed?

Suggestions - Change Courage of the Colossus to trigger based on damage taken instead of CC, like Lifeline on Sterak's Gage. That way it doesn't have as much benefit in trades and skirmishes, but still shines in late game fights.

Suggestion 2 - Replace Courage of the Colossus with a keystone that reduces damage taken while under the effects of hard CC. Tanks are supposed to body block and absorb CC, so taking less damage while CC'd would fit. Maybe make the reduced damage scale off armor and MR so that skirmishers and assassins couldn't use it to cover their weaknesses.

TheHurricaneGamrJan 19, 20171 votes

So what if this happens to Poppy? You nerfed her down to a decently balanced level, but now you are nerfing her keystone again. If she does become bad, are you guys going to be open to buffing her before worlds starts this time?

DemoGuideJan 19, 20171 votes

Meddler, what about bandaid fixes? For example, you see Lee, Vi, and Heca overperforming in the new jungle. You think that is due to jungle changes, and immediately think of ways to solve the problem. But it takes much more time since jungle is a complex system than simply nerfing them. So what about you do some simple nerfs to champions, with a note to yourself to remove them next patch? For example, Vi W proc deals 50% damage to monsters, same for Lee Sin Q and Hec Q. These changes reduce their jungle domination, and they are also kinda feel out of place, so removing them next patch wont feel bad for anybody. But they will be a short-term solution 80% of playerbase will enjoy.

LongHair FoxJan 19, 20171 votes

Could you please elaborate on how you want to make magic damage dealers do less to tanks? I find there is a lot of ways to go about it. (small rant incomming)

Regarding tanks being too squishy against magic damage I personally agree with you, but could this not at least in part be attributed to there just not being that many great magic resist items? According to champion.gg the most frequent build on maokai is item 3068 item 3075 item 3065 item 3026 item 3111 item 3025 a build which gives far more armor than magic resist.

Even if I wanted to I cannot build 3 purely magic resist items and be happy with the final build (Spirit visage is very good but item 3102 has little hp and the passive is kinda useless on tanks since it gets popped by poke, and other than that the items either are team focues like item 3190 or provide just as much armor item 3026 ). Even poppy builds item 3065 since there is no other good magic resist item for her.

I am not confident that making more magic resist items will be all that is needed but it seems like a good place to start.

VarnocJan 19, 20171 votes

Just finished something that I wanted to bring to your attention. I doubt there's anything in here that you've not discussed internally before, but I hope that it brings up something useful to you.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NAYVcZ56-regarding-critical-strike

Golden Tager XJan 19, 20171 votes

What I read

Fuck MasterYi Kayle Jax Tryndamere XinZhao jungle

Critmaster GarenJan 20, 20171 votes

as far as masteries go, they did talk about their goal of having eventually 5 mastery trees in the game.

i really hope this helps support divers + skirmishers and juggernauts + tanks in different ways that ends up making divers and skirmishers want to go for their own masteries instead of courage of the collossus.

ProfDrDeathJan 20, 20171 votes

True.